so Akai or Maschine im looking for a sound library good for pretty lights style music, jungle music, and trap music. (free drum samples would be incredibly useful) something easy to setup into ableton, something compact, easy to use, and not hard to plug in to my computer with as minimal wire etc as possible, something where if i make a drum groove i can easily put it into my song. What are your final suggestions.

not to open this can of worms again mpd32- is super easy to set up with ableton,its plug and play, it has more faders and knobs than maschine, does not come with a sound library, pads are inferior to maschine....but are adjustable. it costs half as much as maschine. so you can buy a crap ton of one hit samples to start a librarymaschine- pads are phenomenal!! 6gb sound library, not as straight forward to set up with ableton, costs $600.these are my opinions. you gotta make a decision as to what is important to you...i own both, in my opinion neither one of these offers EVERYTHING you want.

Maschine comes with software that you can either use as plug in instances within Live, or standalone. In both cases, when it is run in that mode, it can do a lot without any mapping. There is also a screen display. Illuminated pads are great too, it sounds like a gimmick, but they can be helpful in a lot of situations!!

I think I'm biased

On some days, you can turn off your monitor, and just mess around in the dark to the ambient lighting of Maschine.

When your girlfriend gets tired of messing around, you can mess around with Maschine too.

...if it's all about the sound lib, a micro maschine is the biggest bang for the buck....

i use a mpd 32 on stage.....it's a good controler....but the main reason for using it on stage is....it's not a teenage table disco like maschine...no blinkin' lights all over the place....

but i really don't understand what you could need that ni sound lib for.....that's only the common earcandy that makes it so hard to find your own sound.....have a look around.....9 of 10 homeproducers sound the same.....ni is one of the main reasons for that....

and keep in mind.....the ableton sound lib is massive and endless.....there's nothing you could'nt do with that alone....if you got at least some skills and some vision of your sound BEFORE you get lost in skipping through all those NIce presets again.....

and by the way....this is the worst bad timing moment for making that choice......

wait for push and the update with over 50!!! gigs of sound lib......and if you wanna make a living out of this.....make sure each of your tracks has at least ONE sound in it, that you made on your own.....

That sounds interesting. How do I do that? I just acquired one, and the pads feel a bit insensitive. I want to be able to just touch them & get a response. The mpd32, I mean.

I'm actually selling my modded MPD32. It has served me well but I NEED more sensitiviy so I'm a bit bummed I chose it over Maschine all those years ago.

If you want to keep it and get better sensitivity then you need to modify the hardware. Don't bother doing the black tape trick on the back of the pads. Just goto http://www.mpcstuff.com/mpd32stuff.html and choose the fat pad colour of your choice. It might seem a little expensive but seriously, you won't regret it.

Here's mine modded with the fat red pads

Words of advice if you want extra sensitivity like you say then you'll definitely need to put the corx pads on the underside. It will be a bit harder to bang on but you get great sensitivity. You just need tough fingers

As far as Remote Scripts go you'll want to have a look at http://www.nativekontrol.com/. They have some great tools to further the functionality of your MPD.

I use ClyphX and NPKLive II and there's another I'm not sure whether I can mention here.

Here's a sample of how I altered the PAD BANK B to be able to navigate around Live.

That's only scratching the surface of what ClyphX can do, it really is pretty amazing.

No no, This is a serious mod. You need unscrew your MPD32 and look inside. I've opened up mine about 4 times now, it's really easy just a little time consuming and you have to be careful to not lose any screws.

I took a couple of photos of the inside of mine just in case but it wasn't really necessary. Just be cautious and take your time.

you can also adjust sensitivity in your global settings. when i first got mine, i had my stock pads so sensitive, when i tapped it, it hit twice. now i got them set up just right. haven't done the mod yet. haven't felt the need, yet. they aren't maschine pads, but the mpd32 is pretty good....and versatile.

eddiex, you must have some pretty buff fingers I had to really smash on mine to get full vel, and I tried every conceivable combination of sensitivity & threshold.

With the MPC Ren and Maschine that I've tried in my local shop it was so easy to do subtle triplets using just 2 fingers on the same hand. I presume the Push will be just as sensitive so I'm waiting to give that a try.

i definitely think maschine has better pads than the mpd32....but, with the adjustments i've made on the mpd32 + adjusting the velocity and volume in simpler/sampler in drum rack, i have no complaints with the mpd32 stock set up. to be fair, i'm not busting out triplets or anything like that. but when i had the velocity turned up all the way (in drum rack and on the mpd) the pads were so sensitive i couldn't hit them once, with out it firing off twice.